TIRANA, Sept  15 /ATA/ The European Commission resumed on Thursday the process of analytical examination of the legislation with Albania and North Macedonia.

Experts from the European Commission, Albania and North Macedonia have started to review EU laws and policies of Cluster 1 “Basic Values.”

Analytical evaluation of the EU’s acquis, the so-called analytical examination, enables candidate countries to familiarize themselves with EU laws and standards, as well as with the obligations they entail.

It also allows for examination of countries’ levels of readiness and plans for further alignment, thus obtaining preliminary data on the issues most likely to arise during the negotiations.

The analytical examination process is structured according to six thematic clusters. These groupings include the relevant chapters of the acquis together with broad topics related to good governance, the domestic market, economic competition and connectivity.

The exercise of analytical examination consists of two phases: the explanatory session where the Commission departments explain the EU acquis chapter by chapter and the bilateral session where each candidate country is invited to present its position, according to the chapter, with preparations for the adoption and implementation of acquis.

The European Commission will assess and report to the Council on the degree of readiness of a candidate country for a certain cluster, the candidate country’s plans for future preparations and preliminary data on issues that are likely to emerge during the negotiations.

The Council will decide unanimously whether to set initial standards for each negotiating group based on the Commission’s proposal in the examination report.

/sm/